Sixth Happiness (1997) watch online HD

This film is very uplifting, and what a shame that folks like Jesse Helms & the Republican Congress would never allow it to even be shown in schools. It would transform lives. This film shows a man taking lemons and making lemonade - a great lesson for all. A magnificent role model for all, and just think how much HOPE this film could give to disabled and gay children of all ages. If only we had intelligent leaders who actually cared about the disabled and the gay.

The main character is real, so the film is a kind of part-real, part-acted re-enactment of his life. And by the end of the film, you feel as if you have learned something about dealing with adversity. What a shame we have so few films which do this.

Once in a while a film comes along that fills you with such hope that by the time the final credits roll you feel that nothing in life is impossible. I was reluctant at first to see THE SIXTH HAPPINESS. But the glowing reviews in the New York Times and Newsday made go out anyway. Kanga does an amazing job playing a character not unlike himself from the ages of 8 to 18. All this at the age of 38! He is so charismatic, charming, disarming, and funny that his stage presence carries you through this tale that is touching, heart wrenching, and ultimately uplifting. I thought "Why would I want to see a film about a gay, disabled, Parsi? I would have nothing in common with him." But I was so wrong. The problems we all face: dealing with parents and siblings, finding love, potential marriage, and dealing with a cruel harsh and unforgiving world are universal. Seeing the problems that the character Brit surmounts made me realize how much I have in life and how easy it is to take certain things for granted. Knowing that he could find happiness - his sixth happiness with all the strikes he had against him filled me with a lust for life.

The problem of casting when a character must age throughout a story is a clear problem: do you use one actor, with a lot of make-up, or cast different people in the same roles? The need to make family members resemble each other is also a problem. In Ivan Svazbo's film, 'Sunshine', a most imaginative solution of these difficulties were found, with Joseph Fiennes playing members of three generations, each at a certain period in their lives, with others playing the same characters at different ages. In 'Sixth Happiness', the adult narrator plays the himself as a child. This is not a Potter-esquire construct (although there's some knowingness here), but more a response to the character's condition (shared necessarily by the actor): brittle bone disease, which restricts one's ability to grow. In fact, the actor (Firdaus Kanga) is also the author of this semi-autobiographical story, adding another twist.

The story looks at the problems of living with this condition, the stress it puts on the character's family and also on the way that the expectations of others can be as disabling as any physical defect. It also looks at the strange world of India's Parsee community (also featured in some of the novels of Salman Rushdie), and provides a glance at the many faces of modern Bombay. And yet although it is a film of some distinctiveness and humour, I didn't actually enjoy it very much. In some ways, it never quite escapes the feel of validation: in every scene, both the outcome and the purpose of its inclusion in the story seem clearly telegraphed; and while the character pleads to be treated as a normal man, his disability and the reactions it induces are at the centre of every scene. The affected portrait of the Parsees is also somewhat cloying, a sympathetic tumble with a straw man that tells us little about how India is today.

Ultimately, the use Kanga as narrator, which makes the film self-aware of its breach of the usual conventions of casting, is probably the biggest mistake: with each episode interpreted for us, I felt (rather like I did after reading Philip Roth's 'I married a Communist') that I had spent a little too long in the company of a man with a little too much certainty of his own correctness. Thus the tale (and its conclusions) seem forced upon the audience. It's a shame: the tone mars some interesting content.

Like "My Left Foot", this film is a moving story about a disabled child growing up. However, the setting in this instance is India, with its culture showing through. The family portrayed are Zoroastrian, with a love of all things British. Brit's parents had wildly differing attitudes towards his disability. Brit also had a reasonable share of lovers of both genders. I would recommend this film to anyone seeking a greater understanding of disability issues. The title, by the way, comes from a mention in the film of the 1958 film "The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness".